A Time Line of Rene Gonzalez's Scandals, Goof-Ups, and Power Plays
Holy shit this guy sucks.
What explains recent tech layoffs, and why should we be worried?
As layoffs in the tech sector mount, Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer is worried. Research – by him, and others – has shown that the stress layoffs create takes a devastating toll on behavioral and physical health and increases mortality and morbidity substantially. Layoffs literally kill people, he said.
TurnSignl | On-Demand Lawyer App
Next time you’re pulled over, feel safe and empowered with on-demand legal guidance from an attorney. TurnSignl connects you over video chat with a lawyer at the press of a button, and a recording of the encounter is immediately saved to your personal cloud.
Our attorneys are there to protect your rights and trained in de-escalation, so you can rely on them to guide the interaction and get you home safely.
Next time you’re pulled over, feel safe and empowered with on-demand legal guidance from an attorney. TurnSignl connects you over video chat with a lawyer at the press of a button, and a recording of the encounter is immediately saved to your personal cloud.Our attorneys are there to protect your rights and trained in de-escalation, so you can rely on them to guide the interaction and get you home safely.
Icônes
Lucide Icons
Beautiful & consistent icon toolkit made by the community.
Haves and choices | everything changes
None of these choices will exactly halt the machinery of capitalism in its inevitable march through our lives. Most of them won’t even noticeably slow it down. But what happens when you refuse to acknowledge your own choices is you eventually forget who you are: you become accustomed to having so much decided for you that you forget what it means to decide for yourself. You have a hard time knowing what it is that you want, because it isn’t presented to you as an available option. Refusing your own agency time and again is like disconnecting from a power source—the energy is still there, latent and ready, but the plug dangles inches from the outlet.
None of these choices will exactly halt the machinery of capitalism in its inevitable march through our lives. Most of them won’t even noticeably slow it down. But what happens when you refuse to acknowledge your own choices is you eventually forget who you are: you become accustomed to having so much decided for you that you forget what it means to decide for yourself. You have a hard time knowing what it is that you want, because it isn’t presented to you as an available option. Refusing your own agency time and again is like disconnecting from a power source—the energy is still there, latent and ready, but the plug dangles inches from the outlet.
Bop Spotter
I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the street below.
Heard of Shot Spotter? Microphones are installed across cities across the United States by police to detect gunshots, purported to not be very accurate. This is that, but for music.
This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals. It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what’s popping off in real-time.
Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars | Defector
Finding ourselves on this lush, beautiful, abundant planet is not some testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of life. Nor is it a coincidence. This is where life could happen; we are here because this is where we could be. Even here, even where things were as comfortably laid out as our brightest minds could ever imagine, it took billions of years, reproductions beyond counting, before any individual life got advanced enough to think something as silly as "Hey, let's go live on Mars."
Feeling Good Doesn't Require the Democrats
Or: you absolutely don't have to hand it to them
Over the last couple weeks, and for the first time in my adult life, the Democratic Party has risen to the historical moment, seeming to wake from the fever dream of appeasing Republican Christofascism and shake off decades of accumulated
Garbage Day: It's ok to enjoy this
Is Harris a perfect candidate? Of course not. The perfect candidate can not and, in a democracy, should not exist. But it is also not cringe to feel optimistic. It is not cringe to imagine something better than the deranged culture wars we have had to endure for the last decade. And even if Harris does shit the bed in the next three months and Trump somehow wins, it won’t have been cringe to say you went down swinging, letting yourself believe this might work.
Why Harris Will Win
Five reasons for confidence that have nothing to do with polling data
Are You on Team ‘Weird’?
In case you hadn't noticed, over the course of the first week of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, when it was hard to know what was real or what was happening, "weird"
Look At These Fucking Weirdos | Defector
What a weird week. Just eight(!) days ago, Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee, his party and the campaign were dead in the water, and its voters were begging for a miracle. Today, 99 days out from the election, the Kamala Harris campaign is pulling in donations hand over fist, polls have shifted to […]
Kworb.net - All your music data needs in one place
A website that collects and analyzes music data from around the world. All of the charts, sales and streams, constantly updated.
The Song of the Summer Is Actually the Song of 1982
Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” is one of several recent hits bringing back the genre that never got a name.
Low Earth Orbit Visualization | LeoLabs
A visualization of satellites, debris, and other objects tracked by LeoLabs in low earth orbit
Menomena Are Just as Surprised by Their Return as You Are
The art-rock oddballs discuss their upcoming album reissues, their first show as a trio in 14 years, and more.
Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?
The answer involves a remarkable — and lucrative, and ridiculous — scheme to game the way we find music today.
Cong Burn Strokes
iOS and desktop music synthesizer, drum machine, etc.
'American Fiction' And The Wet Eyes Of The Sentimentalist | Defector
We tell ourselves stories to feed our delusions. It’s an ugly world out there, and so many Americans prefer the easy way out. We genuflect to the guru and the influencer; we admire the charlatans who can captivate a crowd and turn a quick buck. We prefer the CliffsNotes to the book, and all the […]
Any real art finds its level by meeting humans and life on their own terms. In place of that sort of probing, American Fiction gives you a movie about angst and love, a fantasy of good negro life so mired in sentiment it has no politic but the simplest judgment of the most obvious racism we can all agree is bad, and no depth outside of what we all need is more love in our lives. Implicit in a film like this—as with so much of the cinema, literature, and non-fiction by and about black people that has emerged post-George Floyd—is a participation trophy for the white, liberal audience: Kudos to you for watching; go tell a friend. Assuage your guilt for the price of a ticket; you're the good guys, after all.
Cycling Fallacies
Puncturing common misconceptions about cycling and infrastructure
Moo Card Player - Hicks.design
A journal post about my MOO card music player setup, using square business cards and NFC tags to play digital music with more physicality (quicker too!)
Freebies | Indieground.net
Free fonts, a lot of 70s- and 80s-inspired retro here.
Pitchfork’s Importance Shouldn’t Be Underrated - The Atlantic
archived 19 Jan 2024 01:45:41 UTC
Saying you’re a Pitchfork person can be mistaken for saying you take its opinions as your own, when ideally it just means that you want a discerning companion for making your own discoveries and judgments.
Pitchfork’s absorption into GQ is a travesty for music media – and musicians | Laura Snapes
Perfect summary.
It is bleak on so many levels, first and foremost the job losses during a straitened time for media. Pitchfork was one of the last stable music outlets going – where else are the former staff, and the site’s hundreds of freelancers, meant to work now?
Incorporating Pitchfork into a men’s magazine also cements perceptions that music is a male leisure pursuit, and undermines the fact that it was women and non-binary writers – Lindsay Zoladz, Jenn Pelly, Carrie Battan, Amanda Petrusich, Sasha Geffen, Jill Mapes, Doreen St Félix, Hazel Cills; the fearless editing of Jessica Hopper and then the most recent editor-in-chief Puja Patel, to name but a handful – who transformed the website in the 2010s. It also suggests that music is just another facet of a consumer lifestyle, not a distinct art form that connects niche communities worthy of close reading, documentation and, when warranted, investigation.
The World’s Most Popular Painter Sent His Followers After Me Because He Didn’t Like a Review of His Work. Here’s What I Learned | Artnet News
Ben Davis on the fallout from his critical review of Devon Rodriguez's "Underground," and what it says about "parasocial aesthetics."
But it seems to me that the majority of Rodriguez’s fans are most engaged by his appealing social-media persona, not his actual artworks. If this is the case, then it’s logical to think that it changes how criticism is perceived. His followers feel like I am attacking a person they like, not judging artworks or analyzing a media phenomenon. I think that explains the character of the reaction, which has a level of raw personal anger completely out of joint with what I wrote in my article.
It's 2023, here is why your web design sucks.
Exploring the reasons why we no longer have web designers.
Is Bandcamp as We Know It Over?
Following its acquisition by the music licensing company Songtradr, layoffs spell trouble at the beloved online music platform.
The Last Refuge
Regarding Rosemary Kirstein's 'Steerswoman' books.
The Body (Often) Tells the Truth
When your frustrated gestures and missteps and bodily distress signals are read as a sign of your incompetence, not a problem with the world, you’re often being done an injustice